


Wolf

by doomcanary



Series: Cadwaladr [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Dark Magic, M/M, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-06
Updated: 2009-10-06
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:16:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1338457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcanary/pseuds/doomcanary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>There is something very wrong with me. I was listening to Abba while I wrote this.</p></blockquote>





	Wolf

Merlin slinks in the shadows, watching them; Arthur and the bard. So much charm, so much beauty, such treasurous glitter in the light of day. Such lies and blackness in his scrying pools at night. Arthur hasn't said a word against Gwynn; but Merlin sees something in his eyes. A flicker when Gwynn looks at him. A kind of fear. Night is falling now, sunset bleeding away, and Merlin slips into the forest to ask dangerous gifts of the dead.

The pool he's seeking is a twisted, alien place; blackened roots of a dying oak knot into the water and writhe treacherously beneath. Glimmers of white are caught in its drowned labyrinth; bones. Merlin brings bones too; ravens' bones and crows' bones, messengers to the otherworld. As he casts them into the water they flame blue, and the glimmer pales and does not fade, suffusing the peaty water with eerie light.

“Come to me, _blaidd_ ,” he whispers. “Come to me, Cadwaladr king. Come to the aid of one who sought your succour once. I am Emrys; I am the kingdom's son. _Blaidd llwyd_ , follow the grey mare. Tell me what you feared.”

The water swells, mounds, a belly pregnant with death; the smooth hill breaks into slithering wavelets that wrap and rewrap over and around, climbing up and down and over and twisting through, and slowly the pool sinks back into stillness. Merlin watches silently, waits. And a pale, filmy face drifts up from the darkness below. Hollow eyes glance over Merlin, indifferent, and drift away as the ghost turns like a leaf in the current of a stream; but as the dead king's face ripples and fades, the lips form a single word.

Merlin watches, out of respect if nothing else, until the Wolf's dead eyes are nothing but a flicker of the starlight dripping from above. He sets a leaf afloat on the water, and lets fall on it a drop of his own blood; a sacrifice for the Hag, by whose cold grace Cadwaladr spoke. As he slips back into the castle, the sky is greying towards dawn.

 

 

In the banquet hall, as he stands in the shadow of a pillar, a ewer of wine in his hand, Merlin thinks that the hunting hounds wandering the hall have begun to acknowledge him as one of their own; they turn an idle head towards his hand, catch his scent and amble away. They, simple creatures, are not to know of dances in a wolf's mask, the heavy slap of a pelt against his back, the lingering scent of smoke among the grey fur. Or of the raven's mask that Gaius keeps, near the sill of the window that faces the dawn. Arthur raises his goblet; Merlin steps forward, and pours out the crimson wine. Gwynn's eyes, pale as Uther's, flick towards him as he moves; the hall is crisscrossed with glances, like spear-shafts.

Later, there will be the chess game of court life; a dance of conversations, each one shifting, meaningless and yet filled with daggers. Arthur, the bright blade, has never seen how many of them he casts away; Merlin watches him as he slashes a swathe through the court, his scarlet doublet moving like a drop of blood along skin. Beside Uther's throne Gwynn strokes his harp, his fingers pale and slim; and Arthur turns aside before he reaches him. Gwynn's hands on the harp still; he reaches down for a cup, and takes a sip of wine. It stains his lips, a flash of blood again.

Merlin, moving from darkness to light along the corridor walls, approaches Arthur's chamber by a roundabout route; following an elusive tug like a scent in the air. It is late, the candles in the hallways guttering low; the guards are drowsy at their posts, the welcome trample of relief long hours away. At the side door he pauses, senses flaring; a creeping something hangs about the door, the touch of pale hands and knowing smiles. Deep in Merlin's mind, the wolf-mask opens yellow eyes. He touches the door, and swings it noiselessly in.

All around him the air is filled with whispering. There is a sour stench of magic all about him, a reeking musk; and voices, everywhere, murmuring. _So little to ask... never be found out... what would your father ... you will be such a king... keep this from coming to light._ And under it there's a heartbeat, the same words, repeated over and over again, like the hypnotic drum of a shaman's dance; _trust no-one else_. Merlin's lip curls in a silent snarl. He almost knows what he will see before he steps inside; but it does nothing to soften the punch of vicious disgust as he sees Gwynn's body over Arthur's back, Gwynn's hands on Arthur's thighs. Arthur is dazed, his eyes unfocused, a hand curled lax on the table beside his head; and all the time as Gwynn's pallid body contorts and thrusts, muscles knotting and cording like the roots in the pool, the bard is whispering, murmuring, weaving a choking cloud of enchantment around Merlin's prince.

Merlin reaches down and within, and calls to the magic, his magic. He feels his eyes burn as they shift wolf-gold, sees the room around him change and distort as the lens of the unreal bends the castle to its whims. Merlin is one; but dead Cadwaladr is a ghost at his shoulder, and the pelt of a slain wolf, alive in dancing, rises and takes on form. One becomes three; Merlin shapeshifts, and a wolf-pack with a single mind leaps across the room on Gwynn. Gwynn lets out a scream like a fox at night – and becomes one, the eternal hunted. The window bursts wide and Gwynn leaps out; Merlin follows, and three wolves become a hawk in the darkened air. Below Gwynn races, a rabbit across the court, dodging and swerving; Merlin stoops, wings folded into his sides and air singing in his beak. He crashes onto nothing, dust; a mouse's tail vanishes down a crack in the wall. The hawk's sinuous head flows out, the wings dissolve into tawny fur; a stoat, eyes glittering with malice, vanishes after the mouse.

 

 

“Sire? My lord?”

Arthur swallows around a groan, his head lolling like an infant's, uncontrolled. He's propped against the table leg, having dragged himself there from the floor; his breeches are half-fastened, his shirt hanging loose. He is thick and sore with something, some wine or heavy drug; he can hardly move, barely able to restore his dignity as far as he has.

“Help me,” says Gaius's voice sharply, and Arthur floats upwards with hands dimly gripping his arms. The floor moves under his feet, his bed rises up to meet him, and he tumbles into dreams. They are a chaos of forests and streets, flashing and jittering in and out of his sight; and something, always something, just out of his reach. Dizzily he feels a dark lust, the dark gleam of blood on earth yawns across his eyes; he is closer, closer, drawing in -

He wakes at a fox's scream, cut off sharply in the empty silence of the night. An image of tearing jaws and snarling fades in his mind. Gaius looks up at him, his eyes cool and ancient, and utterly calm.

“I'm glad you're feeling better, sire,” he says, and returns to his book.

 

 

Merlin accompanies him the next day, for a walk in the woods to restore him; Gaius's orders are for rest, and Arthur reluctantly complies. Late autumn sun strikes them as they make their way up a little hill, green and round and clear of trees; Arthur looks at Merlin, and is struck by the way the sun seems to make him darker, not light him up. It paints scarlet on the whiteness of his skin, and turns his dark hair blacker yet. His old tan doublet is as ruddy as an animal's coat in its fading light. He is Arthur's opposite, in so many ways; dark where Arthur is fair, clever where Arthur is bold, subtle where Arthur is simply a king-to-be.

“There's a saying amongst the Norsemen that one day a wolf will swallow the sun,” says Merlin, meeting Arthur's eyes.

“You know the answer to that, Merlin,” he replies. “In Albion, the sun dies every year.”

“But it doesn't stop him coming back again.” Abruptly Merlin grins, and Arthur feels a rush of sudden joy; Merlin tears off down the hill, and Arthur races after him, two hound pups playing, free of care. And a grey-muzzled wolf, little but watching eyes in the undergrowth, gets to its feet and lopes away towards a darkened pool.

**Author's Note:**

> There is something very wrong with me. I was listening to Abba while I wrote this.


End file.
